Earlier today, I had the pleasure of joining the Appellate Lawyers’ Association lunchtime meeting to talk about Litigation Analytics and Appellate Law: What the Numbers Tell Us About the Illinois and California Supreme Courts.  Attached here is a copy of the Powerpoint for the Presentation: Data Analytics 11 15 2017, and here’s a recommended

Yesterday, we looked at how often governmental entities have appeared as parties in civil cases at the Illinois Supreme Court.  Today, we address the governmental entities’ winning percentage.

Governmental entities won sixty percent of the time in 1990 as petitioners.  They won half the time in 1991, 60% in 1992 and 50% in 1993.  In

Yesterday, we reviewed the individual Justices’ voting records in death penalty cases for the years 1990 through 1999.  Today, we’re looking at the Justices’ voting records for the years 2000 through abolition in 2010.

Partial reversals with the sentence affirmed were quite rare during the years 2000 through 2004.  Justice Miller led the Court, voting

Yesterday, we began our analysis of the individual Justices’ voting records in death penalty cases – specifically, how often each Justice voted with the majority.  Today, we’ll review the data for the years 2000 through 2010.  First, the years 2000 through 2004.  Justices McMorrow (34 cases), Rarick (4 cases) and Bilandic (17 cases) voted with

For the past several weeks, we’ve been comparing the death penalty jurisprudence of the Illinois and California Supreme Courts.  Having reviewed the county-by-county reversal rates last week, this week we’re looking at the individual Justices.  We’ll review two  indices of the Justices’ views and influence on the Court: first, the percentage of cases where the

Yesterday, we began reviewing the data on majority opinions in death penalty cases from 1990 through the Court’s last death penalty appeal in 2010.  Today, we look at a related question: did the Court’s majority opinions tend to run longer when the Court was partially or fully reversing?

Interestingly, across the entire twenty year period,